The first glimpse at what has been a crazed 5 months of looking that I can only equate to a college search.
You toured five schools?
Yea. We toured 10.
Thinking about liberal arts, engineering, pre-med, pre-law, co-ops and internships opportunities? Dorm life, frat life, and career services?
We are talking about play-based learning, Creative Curriculum. Reggio vs. Montessori. Charter. Public. Immersion. And did I mention they have immersion in Mandarin, Spanish, French? Or immersion Montessori? Is that what you were after? Or International Baccalaureate?
You know they have that.
For the three year olds.
And aftercare? And before care? Do you offer power tots and music? Tutoring? Outside time? Nature based learning?
Did you know they have that?
We're talking public schools here, people.
DC. Public. Schools.
Five-Eight years ago, we were getting married. We were all buying our first homes as married couples. We were city dwellers!
We can walk to restaurants! We can metro places! Transitioning neighborhoods are home value!
There's no way we're going to live in this house in 8 years! When we are thinking about school for kids!
We all move to Virginia when we have kids!
There's no way we can put our kids in DC schools.
Well clinch your britches ya'll.
We're going to public/charter school. In DC.
I'll start with a caveat: how lucky we are in DC that the public school has full PK-3 offered throughout the city. What grew out of Head Start for at risk kids is a great opportunity for ALL kids in the city.
But we are at the mercy of a terrible "in bounds" school.
Did you know there's vocab for school searching?
And we lose in-bound preference all the "good" DC publics?
Because of thinks like boundary preference and sibling preference and lawdy, I'm not commuting that way for 90 minutes for PK-3 preference.
(In that order.)
And, isn't it so Edwards, that they are using a new lottery process this year.
We pick 12. 12 only.
Pref them in order.
It's the sickest form of sorority rush for a 2.5 year old.
Do you put a "safety" school on your list?
We did.
We think?
But the process has never happened before. So will we be #700 on every single list because of a single lottery number?
Bless to the five schools that opted out of the lottery to see how it played out. We entered all their lotteries too.
We were 12. So lucky to be 12 and have 400 behind us on a waiting list.
The chances of these "top" (subjective) charters and publics are less than getting into Ivies.
Montessori immersion staying out of the lottery?
11 non-siblings got in.
There are 480 on the wait list behind them.
I've had nightmares about being 1208th in the common lottery. I've woken in the middle of the night to upload the website to see if maybe everything was posted early.
I've had to think is our kid a "Montessori" kid, a "Reggio" kid, an "International Baccalaureate" kid? Would he thrive in immersion or be lost? Are arts more important? Or math and science?
Ya'll he's two and a half.
But tomorrow is D-Day.
I, along with 3000 other parents will be desperately uploading a website, rather than running to the mailbox to see if we get a fat or thin envelope.
Send good thoughts our way.
You know, to determine the future of our rising 3 year old.
Who spilled juice on the couch tonight.
And was kind of scared at how loud the train was at the museum yesterday.
Calls caterpillars "paterpillars".
Whose favorite number is eleventeen.
And favorite food is "mickey mouse chicken".
Who loves to eat naked
And who only brushes his teeth if you say you need to brush those sea otters out of there.
So ... what's your safety?
After talking to my Mom, I want to caveat how lucky we are to have the resources and ability to move to the more expensive/better schools suburbs if we choose for schools in the future.
ReplyDeleteOthers don't have that option.
May all public schools grow and thrive. I believe in them.